July 6, 2011--During a Twitter
Town Hall at the White House, President Barack Obama became the first
president to live tweet and then fielded 18 questions submitted via
Twitter. Obama's live tweet was very much in tune with
the ongoing focus on the budget and debt ceiling: "in order to reduce
the deficit,what costs would you cut and what investments would you
keep - bo." Questions from people around the country were
"surfaced" by "curators" and posed to the President by Twitter
Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey. Neither Obama nor Twitter knew
the questions in advance. Most popular question topics among the
169,395 tweets submitted were jobs (23%), the budget (18%), taxes
(18%),
education (11%), war (6%) and housing. One of the questions
came from Speaker John Boehner. Obama's responses were not
limited to 140 characters (summaries of his remarks were produced for
Twitter users and tweeted). In the latter part of the town hall,
Obama discussed
some of the responses to the question he had tweeted at the outset.

MR.
DORSEY: And our next question comes from someone you may
know. This
is Speaker Boehner.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, there you go. (Laughter.)

MR. DORSEY: “After embarking on a record spending binge that left
us deeper
in debt, where are the jobs?” And I want to note that these
characters
are his fault. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: First of all --

MR. DORSEY: Not his fault, not his fault.

THE PRESIDENT: -- John obviously needs to work on his typing
skills. (Laughter.) Well, look, obviously John is the
Speaker of
the House, he’s a Republican, and so this is a slightly skewed
question.
(Laughter.) But what he’s right about is that we have not seen
fast
enough job growth relative to the need. I mean, we lost, as I
said, 4
million jobs before I took office, before I was sworn in. About 4
million
jobs were lost in the few months right after I took office before our
economic
policies had a chance to take any effect.

There are a couple of things that we can continue to do. I
actually
worked with Speaker Boehner to pass a payroll tax cut in December that
put an
extra $1,000 in the pockets of almost every single American. That
means
they’re spending money. That means that businesses have
customers.
And that has helped improve overall growth.

We have provided at least 16 tax cuts to small businesses who have
needed a lot
of help and have been struggling, including, for example, saying zero
capital
gains taxes on startups -- because our attitude is we want to encourage
new
companies, young entrepreneurs, to get out there, start their business,
without
feeling like if they’re successful in the first couple of years that
somehow
they have to pay taxes, as opposed to putting that money back into
their
business.

So we’ve been able to cooperate with Republicans on a range of these
issues. There are some areas where the Republicans have been more
resistant in cooperating, even though I think most objective observers
think
it’s the right thing to do. I’ll give you a specific
example.

For us to move forward on a major infrastructure initiative where we’re
putting
people to work right now -- including construction workers who were
disproportionately unemployed when the housing bubble went bust -- to
put them
to work rebuilding America at a time when interest rates are very low,
contractors are looking for work, and the need is there, that is
something that
could make a huge, positive impact on the economy overall. And
it’s an
example of making an investment now that ends up having huge payoffs
down the
road.

We
haven’t gotten the kind of cooperation that I’d like to see on some of
those
ideas and initiatives. But I’m just going to keep on trying and
eventually I’m sure the Speaker will see the light. (Laughter.)

Other Republican leaders submitted tweets as well, although Boehner's
was the only one asked. Mitt Romney tweeted, ".@BarackObama Where are the jobs? Use #ObamaIsntWorking
to #askObama your
questions for his town hall." Romney also retweeted "RT @nikkihaley Why is your administration
supporting the NLRB’s job killing policies in South Carolina? #AskObama" as did Pawlenty. Herman Cain asked,
"As a mathematician, I've got to ask: exactly how did you come up with
the jobs "created or saved" number, again? #askobama."